Do you forgive or hold a grudge?
Forgiveness: The Real F-Bomb (Photo credit: bangart)
I find it better to let go after a while. Life’s just way too short to continue to hold a grudge, plus it could most likely affect my blood pressure.
I won’t necessarily forgive, mind you. If someone (or in the case of current politics) some figure or organization, does something that affects me (or a large portion of the population) in a damaging way, and I know that what happened was not my own fault, then I can’t forgive. I also don’t forget. In the case of politics, there is the option to get rid of the one who damaged a society by voting them out of office. On the other hand, at the more local level, when it’s just between two people especially if they see each other a good deal of the time, it’s a little more difficult. I won’t hold a grudge, but I necessarily won’t forgive either.
A Strong Heart
This morning I got to sit down and chat with a friend of mine from one of the role play games I play online. We were chatting about another player who was taking advantage of her Game Master abilities and how it chased my friend away.
We’ll call this friend MWF.
Eventually, through the conversation it got on to the topic of her children. I was too scared to ask her about her children and why their fathers weren’t in the pictures. I wasn’t prepared to get the answers that I did. I am glad that I did get the gall to finally ask her about them. The story that unfolded blew me away.
I started by asking her about her youngest child, Baby J. He’s just a few months old and very much the giggle machine when he comes on the mic. MWF explained to me that her relationship with Baby J’s father was, for lack of a better term, one night of passion and lust. Neither of them want that relationship status because it could ruin their careers. both are firefighters and it’s techy ground for them. MWF lives in a very small nosy town where everyone knows everyone else’s business. Baby’s J’s father is in the picture and helps up as much as he can.
She then told me about how Baby K came to be. The story that followed with this sent me into thinking about it almost all day. MWF explained to me that she went from man to man thinking it was love and then one thing leading to another and hearts being broken more times than anyone’s heart should ever explain. While she has suspects of who Baby K’s father is, she doesn’t know exactly and seems to be very much ok with this.
Her last lover invited her to live him, promised a place of their own, a job and when she moved to Indiana to be with him, she lived in a hotel hoping for better accommodations. Things that never came. With her she had all of her possession, and her first child, Miss A. Miss A was very little and doesn’t remember this. Which is a good thing. MWF’s lover had another woman, who had an extreme case of jealousy. MWF doesn’t remember much as they beat her up badly enough that she black out. When she woke up, she retrieved her daughter and sought out help. MWF left her daughter in the care of people she knew she could trust and went to the hospital to get medical attention. It had turned out that she did fight back before she blacked out, traces of skin were found under her skin. Sadly though, MWF was sexually abused by the man she thought was her lover and his psychotic girlfriend.
She worked as a stripper, was homeless countless times and still held her up high even though the world was beating her down. MWF was taken in by a “church couple” who allowed her to get in touch with her grandmother. These people saved her. She was engaged and broke up because of trust issues. MWF worked as a stripped to feed and clothe herself and her children. She has two other children that she gave up to a better life. While she regrets not having them with her, she knows they are safer than any life that she could give. She is now providing for the three that she does have with her, and is doing a superb job of that.
I don’t know what she thinks about all the time, I only know what she has told me. I can tell you that I don’t think I’ve ever met a mentally and emotionally strong person as I have with MWF. To think that most of this stuff happened within the past ten years, I’ve gained a life time of respect for her. I know that I didn’t cover nearly all of the stuff that she told me but we’ll leave that for her to fill in when she is ready.
On a side note, MWF is up for Firefighter of the Year, which makes me happy to know that she is one of my dearest friends. She doesn’t need a cape, to be a hero, just hope and knowing how to adapt to situations around her.
Keep it real and rockin’
